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by Natterina



Series: Soulmarked [4]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Romance, Slow Burn, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 20:40:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11813787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: Eleven year old Aqua decides, fate be damned, that this strange boy is her Name.Years later, Aqua feels as though her ideal world is sundering, and she’s the only one sane enough to see it.





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**Author's Note:**

> And another soulmate identifying marks one! Hope you all enjoy - as usual, it goes like this: white scar = alive, black scar = dead, dark blue scar/bruising = lost to the darkness.
> 
> I got a bit skewed with my timeline where I wrote Ven as being at Land of Departure for 2 years instead of the 4 he is: I've fixed it, but if anyone spots any wild leaps in ages, please tell me! I write them as 21, 20, and 17 in BBS.

They’ve spent their whole lives trying to put it into words.

The silence between them is deafening, the feeling they cannot convey _properly_ , never at the right time and always something meant to be squashed and hidden, and the moon is bright as it hovers over the battered gardens of Radiant Garden.

They have been here a dozen times, centre-place in Radiant Garden’s square. They have been here before, face to face and trying to stay silent, to keep that peculiar ache in every crevice of their hearts pushed down and ignored.

They have been here before, Radiant Garden’s moon lighting up the square and highlighting every line on their faces, every downturn of the lips, only this time they’re not wielding their keyblades. They’re not trying to kill each other, pushing down that little glow-worm in their hearts in order to secure a victory.

The road behind them is a ruin, and Aqua wonders if it was always a ruin, or if they wrecked it themselves.

Was it always a dust-covered road, overgrown and sooty and singed beyond belief? She doesn’t think she would have noticed, dancing down the overgrown weeds, running fingers through hip-high grass and envisioning her future with startling clarity. She had it all planned, every aspect of it right down to the year she would take her Mark of Mastery. Nothing could ruin it, nothing could push it away or knock things out of place, and Aqua had never been knocked down to the floor so hard as when she watched it crumble to dust before her.

“Terra?”

Her pedestal is high, and Terra is the only one who has ever been able to knock her from it.

* * *

Eraqus takes her when she is ten years old.

She doesn’t remember much of the life before. She remembers an accident, bright lights and emergency sirens, a new-born sibling she glimpses through ratty curtains before she is alone. A dozen children share an old home, and then she is leaving as quickly as she arrives. Aqua doesn’t remember much of the before, but she can still picture the sight of Radiant Garden disappearing in the rear-window of the gummi ship, her hands pressed flat against the glass as Eraqus explains to her why she is leaving.

His voice is kind, but she is fascinated and amazed and _free_ from a life of skipped meals and sewn-up rags, and she is too excited for adventure to really consider the _why_ of leaving.

For a while, she is the only one.

Aqua loves the Land of Departure. She loves the warm air, the bright gardens she has the freedom to roam and the fairy lights that line them at night. She loves the glow of the fireflies, the million stars in the sky that she can see even from her bedroom window, a luxury and a blessing that she watches every evening.

It is often lonely, when she is allowed the afternoons to herself, when Eraqus halts her training an hour past noon each day and she is free to do as she wishes so long as she remains on-world. There is no one to run through the gardens with, no one to chase and laugh with, to explore the huge castle with on dark and rainy evenings.

There is no one, and then there is someone.

Eraqus returns from a trip to Agrabah with a boy whose skin is grey with grime, who sheds sand everywhere he walks and whose eyes are bluer than the sky. He is dark and broody, quiet, a year younger than she but the same age she was when she arrived. She offers him her bathroom to bathe, and he takes the towel from her grip without a word. Aqua frowns when she watches the door close, wondering what has happened to this boy to make him so angry at the world.

He doesn’t stay angry. That night, when Eraqus has given the boy a room of his own and a wicked storm has closed in on the world, Aqua finds him in the corridor on her way to the kitchens.

“What are you doing?” Aqua asks, nearly twelve but with a moogle teddy crushed to her chest with one arm. He looks up at her, silhouetted in the dark though she can see the glint in his eyes, and she can feel him take a step closer to her.

“Exploring. Wanna join?”

Aqua nods, her other arm coming to her chest, and together the two of them explore the castle, going further than Aqua ever dared to go alone. The castle is huge and old, many parts of it simply closed up due to lack of use, and with every creaking floorboard and clap of thunder they jump, scared but eager to discover. Aqua feels bolder than she has ever done before, no longer having to go at it alone as the strange boy from Agrabah sticks by her side. It makes her feel seven years old again, exploring dark corridors and hiding from every sign of life.

Their adventure is cut short that night when they knock a suit of armour over and flee all the way back to Aqua’s room, slamming the door shut behind them and hiding under the covers. They sit in silence for ten minutes, tense and listening for the sound of footsteps from the _obviously_ haunted armour, until they collapse into giggles in the darkened room. Aqua leans over, turns the nightlight on, and realises she has lost her moogle.

“Don’t worry!” The boy says eagerly, puffing out his chest in a way she finds silly, and his eyes are hard and proud. “We’ll go and rescue him tomorrow night, I promise!”

Aqua laughs, her arms wrapped around her knees. Moogle does not need rescuing, she knows, because it’s far more likely that Eraqus himself will come across it in the morning. She doesn’t think they got further than the first floor in the East Wing, and certainly not into any fully-closed areas. But she smiles at him, before her eyes widen.

“Oh! I don’t know your name! Mine’s Aqua.” She pushes her hand out politely, like Eraqus told her, and the boy looks at it strangely before he takes the cue and shakes it.

“Terra.” He’s smiling, boyish and almost struck, as though he can’t quite believe they haven’t traded names yet either. His grip is warm, and Aqua smiles.

Aqua decides, right then and there, that this boy is her Name.

* * *

Of course, what Aqua decides might not be the truth, this she knows. But Aqua does everything she can to change the course of fate before it truly kicks in.

They spend every day together. Their mornings they spend with Eraqus, training until just past noon; their afternoons are spent in the gardens, carefree and trapped in the warm wind even though Terra complains it is too _cold_. They spend many nights of many years exploring the castle, wandering late into the night before they flee back to one of their rooms, collapsing against the door and telling stories well into the morning hours.

They are ten and eleven, exploring and young, eleven and twelve and training hard, hard enough that Eraqus eventually tells them to calm it, slow down, because they are still so young. But Terra is a year below Aqua, and if they want to pass their Mark of Mastery together then Terra _needs_ to catch up, until Eraqus tells them it’s all _skill_ , not length of time wielding the blade.

They are twelve and thirteen, inseparable as they spend nights watching the stars and recounting their dreams, still able to allow their arms to brush against each other with no need to use gloves during training. They hit puberty, and it is awkward and strange as Aqua loses her gangliness and Terra _shoots_ up until he is taller than her. She keeps growing until she reaches nearly his height, and then Terra has _another_ growth-spurt and finally stops when the top of her head is level with his shoulder.

They are fourteen and fifteen, and Aqua admires the way her chest fills with warmth despite the winter chills sharpening her lungs. They are fifteen and sixteen, and the world keeps changing and _still_ they don’t have their Names.

They are sixteen and seventeen, and things begin to change. Aqua catches Terra’s eyes on her more often than not, and the air between them crackles with the tension when they stand too close together. Every interaction is tinged with it, this _feeling_ that bursts up between them and makes their interactions strange, makes Aqua’s cheeks tinge pink when she can smell his scent. They keep their midnight adventures, but the first night that both of them return to their own rooms they _know_ what it is that keeps them apart, makes it dangerous for them to spend anymore nights together.

A gentle crush that is easily hidden blooms into something far deeper and harder to keep under wraps. The nervous shake of her hands becomes nearly impossible to supress when he is near, when she hears the catch in his breath when he leans too close or accidentally brushes his skin against her own. It is a bubble of emotion that rises in her chest and makes her feel sick, a truth she does not want to face even though it is all she ever wanted.

Aqua knows it is love.

She can hear it in the silence of her dark room, so quiet and still with the absence of Terra. She can see it behind her eyelids when the lights turn out, the low hum of the glow-worm that nestles its way into her heart and refuses to leave.

She knows Terra sees it. He sees it in the way her eyelashes flutter from the snow in Christmas Town when they begin off-world training, the moment of tenderness when she ties the top button of his coat knowing he hates the cold. Terra sees it in the colours of his dreams, the phantom feel of her lips on his own before she disappears to wakefulness, and the ache in his chest when he realises they’re only dreams.

They feel it in the way they need to separate at night, in order to get some time alone before they break and give in.

And despite it all, despite Aqua desperately waiting each night from the moment puberty rudely kicks her into a new body, Terra gets his Name first.

* * *

The pain kicks in before Terra even has a chance to wake up properly.

It begins with a tingle, a sharp little twinge in his wrist before the skin _burns_. It is fire and blood; a red-hot brand being slammed onto his wrist and then held there. It is sharp and hot, and Terra can feel it radiate up his arm and to his shoulder. It runs through his blood, and he can’t hold back the yell from releasing through gritted teeth.

Eraqus is in his room in less than a minute, worry in his features, followed by the light of Aqua just behind him. He looks around, eyeing an upright Terra who grips his wrist and clenches his teeth so tightly the tendons in his neck are visible. Eraqus realises immediately and sends Aqua away, and the light from her lantern disappears before Eraqus turns the lamp on.

Terra isn’t an idiot. He may be getting broader by the day and he may be broodier than ever before, but he is _not_ the oaf Aqua likes to tease he is, and he knows his Name is coming in. he knows what it is, knows that it is the damned _proof_ of fate, of a perfect match somewhere out there. It will either invalidate every feeling he has for Aqua, turning it pointless as it shows him he belongs to another, or it will reinforce those feelings a hundredfold. The Name cements a line that can or cannot be crossed, dooming them to others or drawing a line in the sand. Once they cross it, they can never go back.

Eraqus snap freezes one of Terra’s shirts and holds it to his wrist, but it does nothing to dull the pain and Terra sits there for another ten minutes until the pain dissipates as though it were never there in the first place. Eraqus removes the t-shirt, but Terra turns his eyes away and looks at the floor.

“Terra?”

Terra frowns. He doesn’t wish to see it, doesn’t wish to have the uncertainty confirmed in either direction. So long as he doesn’t _see_ it, the Name both is and is not _Aqua_. He’s not sure which option is easier.

Eraqus sighs. “May I, Terra?”

Terra nods, and he feels Eraqus lift his wrist from his knee and turn it so it can be examined. There is a soft sigh, almost of exasperation, before Eraqus lets it drop onto Terra’s lap. “It is as I suspected.”

Terra’s eyes flicker up from the floor to look at Eraqus, his brows furrowed and his lips turned down. Eraqus’ face is a curiosity in and of itself: he looks both relieved and worried, as though he does not know where to go from here. At Terra’s inquiring look, he nods down towards Terra’s wrist.

“Go on, Terra. You already know who it says.”

The room goes quiet, Terra’s breathing the only sound audible. He turns his wrist quickly, like ripping off a band aid, and sees the Name there in startling white on his wrist.

_Aqua._

It is _her_ writing, of course, and it looks exactly as he expected it to. The ‘A’ is looped in that strange way Aqua writes her name, as though the pen had never left the paper before moving onto the rest of the Name, in perfect cursive. It is neat enough to sign treaties and end wars, and so achingly familiar that he has to look away.

It is both the easiest solution to this _thing_ between them, and possibly the most inconvenient and worst thing to have ever happened. Aqua, his best friend, a woman he loves and has tried so desperately to hide it, and now he knows that the day she wakes up with a Name she will come marching right down to him and the whole world will turn on its axis.

But she is his and he is hers, if the Names are true, and the next day he feels his heart thudding in his chest as he watches her carve a path through the training grounds.

* * *

Aqua gets her Name a month later.

Unlike Terra, she is awake in her room when she feels that rumoured itching, the only warning her body will give her before it burns and scars her forever. One moment she is at her desk, her lantern and several balls of light illuminating the room, and the next she is diving for the leather strap she keeps under her pillow.

The chair clatters to the floor as she pushes the leather between teeth which are already grinding from the blooming pain. Aqua lowers herself to the floor, her back pressed against the wooden frame of her bed, and leans her head back to rest on the mattress. She rests her arm on her bent knees, and tries to muffle her groans of pain as the burning hits her in waves.

When the pain dissipates, and Aqua’s sweat has soaked the hair at the base of her skull, she sits upright and stares down at her wrist.

There, in neat but disjointed writing, deep due to the way he holds his pens, is _Terra._

Aqua laughs.

* * *

Something about the situation spurs her into action.

She barely sleeps the night her Name comes in, instead spending hours laid on top of her bedsheets with her hands over her stomach, one finger tracing the Name. If she does sleep, she does not dream or shift in her bed.

By morning, the agitation and the confidence arise in one, and Aqua rushes through her morning routine when she hears the doors in the corridor opening and closing.

She finds him in the gardens near the greenhouse. Perhaps as a tribute to his namesake, Terra had made a point of taking up the garden work once he reached fourteen, and Aqua has wondered more than once if it had contributed to the huge growth spurt he had in the following months.

“Aqua.” There is warmth in his voice, and his smile is pleasant despite the hour. The sky is streaked orange and blue as the sun peeks over the horizon, but the wind (or her _nerves_ ) makes the hairs on her arms rise in the cool air.

The butterflies rise in her stomach as Terra looks at her, his brows furrowed a little as he waits for a response. Aqua realises she is staring, her eyes bright but piercing as they focus on his face. Her mind stutters to a halt, the words she had planned out disappearing into the depths of her brain as she struggles to summon a word.

“Are you in love with me?” Aqua all but blurts it out, all eloquence gone as she struggles to stop her hands from flying to her mouth in mortification. Terra recoils, not in disgust but in surprise _,_ because whatever he had expected her to say it had not been _that_.

He has to check that he really is awake, because although her words have not quite come from nowhere, he had assumed she would carry on her refusal to acknowledge their feelings for quite some time.

But Aqua is staring at him, a hope in her eyes that fades a little with each second he spends not responding, and Terra’s stance changes.

“I am.” He looks taller as he straightens his back, and his jaw juts out just a little as he swallows, determined to not be ashamed of his feelings and to not allow Aqua to see that she really is his biggest weakness.

And even though Aqua can see his answer in the lines of his body and the way his face softens when he looks at her, she still does not expect the answer. It has been years of an unspoken thing between them, and now he looks at her as though she has asked him an obvious truth.

Aqua feels her voice catch in her throat as she tries to string words together, and rather than blurt out anything else she peels her glove off and holds her wrist out.

Terra does not even hesitate: he steps closer and reaches for her wrist, and Aqua can’t help the butterflies that flutter in her stomach as his fingers slide over her skin before he grasps it.

It’s a day of surprises, it seems, because Aqua expects Terra to examine her wrist. She expects him to trail his fingers over it as he _should_ do, as the tales of all lovers tell. He should be looking at her wrist in awe and surprise, that’s how she planned it as a child.

Instead, Terra uses his grip on her wrist to tug her closer than she’s ever been outside of sparring, and Aqua falls into the kiss seamlessly. His hands move from her wrist to her waist, and before Aqua has even _registered_ what she’s doing she has wrapped her arms around his neck and is on the tips on her toes. The kiss is hard, years of pent-up-feelings and refusing to acknowledge the tension between them, and Aqua is flush against Terra trying to get as close as she can.

Terra kisses her like it’s all he’s ever wanted to do, and he smells of sweat and the garden and cold air, that windy smell that sticks to clothing after too long outside. It is warm and fast and eager, and neither of them are even remotely embarrassed when their teeth clack. It is sloppy, the first kiss off two teenagers who use too much tongue and don’t know where to place their hands.

Aqua is _just_ beginning to move her hands from Terra’s neck to his chest when the abrupt sound of a throat clearing slices through the air. They spring apart, red blooming on Aqua’s cheeks as Terra clears his own throat into his hand.

Eraqus stands close by, his face stern but with the twist of a smile to his lips.

“If you’re _quite_ finished, Master Xehanort will be visiting us within the hour. I expect you both to be present.”

“Yes, Master.” Aqua’s voice is little more than a terrified whisper, but Terra speaks as though he has done nothing to be embarrassed about. She can tell by his very presence beside her that he is doing that confident stance again, the one that says _question me, I dare you_.

Eraqus nods at them both, but Aqua is sure she sees a smirk on his lips before he turns away.

* * *

That’s how the _dream_ starts.

They don’t have time to talk before they reach the castle, for whilst Aqua does not need to make herself presentable, _Terra_ does since he is half covered in dirt from the garden.

And then Aqua is caring for the sleeping Ventus, the strange boy whose eyes are blank and empty but who sleeps fitfully with a Name already emblazoned on his wrist at thirteen years old. Aqua tries not to peek at it, but even from where she wipes a washcloth across his forehead she can see the beautiful _K_ that makes the first letter.

When Ventus wakes with brighter eyes they have already welcomed him into their fold with open arms, and Terra and Aqua retreat to the common area to talk. They don't start a conversation immediately, and instead Aqua dozes on the settee with her head in Terra's lap and his fingers running through her hair, until it is long past midnight and Terra wakes her trying to carry her to her bed. They settle in his room instead, the lantern burning brightly in the darkness, and Aqua leans against him with his arms around her as they come up with a way to go forward.

They come up with the dream.

It’s simple, really. They really _do_ need to focus their all on their training, and with Ventus in their life any spare time they may have had is already removed from the equation. It makes sense, they both agree, for them to wait until _after_ they’ve both become Keyblade Masters. It is the sensible choice, the right choice, and besides, with each other’s Names on their wrists, it’s not like they’re meant for anyone _else_.

They part in the morning with one long, lingering kiss, but Aqua returns to her room with a smile on her face. She knows they’ll pass their exam _together_ , and then they can _be_ together, happy and free to do as they please. They can be best friends and lovers, and Ventus added to their trio is _never_ seen as a hindrance. Four years pass with them devoted to their dream, four years of refusing to touch longer than necessary, four years of focused devotion to their studies and their training. Four years of flinching away from accidental touches and forcing all of their conversations to be about their friendship.

The months before the exam are full of excitement and anticipation, to the point where even Ventus looks forward to witnessing the happiness of his best friends. He teases and torments them, and the mood is light for _weeks_ despite the oncoming exam.

And then Terra fails.

* * *

“We need to talk.”

Terra looks up from where he is packing his knapsack. His eyes are hard, and Aqua feels whatever hope she had allowed to settle in her heart fall straight into her gut.

“Do we really need to?”

She can’t help it. She tuts.

“Oh sit down, it’s just a talk.”

Their eyes connect for a moment, _really_ connect, and he looks as though he is debating telling her to _get out_. Something dark is curling in his eyes, and she feels it like a shutter falling. A moment passes, and then he sits on the end of his bed. Aqua sighs and leans against the doorway.

“Things won’t change between us, right? Tell me they won’t.”

Terra smiles. It is polite, foreign, almost vacant in its coldness. It feels like ice over her skin.

“They won’t.”

And she can feel him changing path already, taking the left road to darkness as Ventus will take the right, and she stands in the centre unknowing where her own path will lead her on this awful _spying_ mission. It makes her feel unclean, a liar.

She is losing him in the bitterness, and he’s not even left yet.

Aqua wonders why she even bothered entering his room.

* * *

She hates this in-between.

The encounter in Cinderella’s world had been awkward enough as it was, with him having left the Land of Departure without so much as a wave goodbye.

She gets it, she really does. Aqua can understand fully why he feels pushed away and left behind, but did he have to be so _abrupt_ about it? And in the castle, when he had asked her if she still shared that dream with him?

She could have thrown her keyblade at him, because _of course_ she does. Terra failing his Mark of Mastery didn’t mean _in any way_ that Aqua would suddenly leave him behind, judge him unworthy of her time and leave him in the dust. And even though _he_ had asked _her_ , he didn’t seem too convinced by her answer, and she had been too stunned at the question to chase after him.

And now here, in Radiant Garden, where she stands in the square feeling lost and confused, because Terra slips further into the darkness the more she tries to reach for him. She can’t slip behind the walls he has thrown up around his heart, terrible heights of brick and mortar her fingers can’t scrape through. She can’t drill it home, the truths they have been raised with all their lives. Aqua knows she knows best, because she _does_ even if she’s a little too strict on her interpretations of the rules.

But Aqua also knows that no matter how many lists of all the wrong things to do she may try to lay down, he will not hear it. And now _Ventus_ thinks she is acting too big for her boots.

 _Ventus_ , who had always refused to pick a side, who belonged squarely in-between them, protected by them and as big a part of their lives as they are in his. Ventus, who has the Name of a girl on his wrist he does not know, who doesn’t see how each day Aqua looks down at her own wrist and watches as it changes in shades.

Her wrist is a constant itch, the raised bumpy skin faltering between a royal blue and a navy blue with each day that passes, the surest sign to her that Terra is slipping into the darkness. She has no proof that this is what it means, and will never know for sure until over a decade later when the apprentices confirm it, but it seems to be an obvious truth when she has followed Terra through the worlds and watched the darkness grow in him with every changing shade of the Name on her wrist.

Confused, hurt, _angry_ , Aqua tugs her gloves on and prepares to leave.

* * *

And Terra, he spends his travels pointedly ignoring the Name on his wrist.

His wristband is thick and easy to keep clean, a blessing since he cannot look at his wrist without feeling a hole open up in his stomach. It makes him feel sick, a shame that bubbles up inside of him and makes it impossible to think of Aqua without feeling like he is doing something _wrong_.

Perhaps that is the first sign that him following Xehanort truly _is_ wrong, but Aqua has always been too strict, too eager to follow rigid rules, and so ignoring his gut really does seem rational.

It hurts him, how much he loves her. She has been a part of his world for nearly as long as he can remember: the memories of Agrabah are hazy at best, memories of heat and dusty lungs and sweat-riddled hair. His best memories are full of cool days in the Land of Departure, Aqua by his side, a perfect constant in a mostly unchanging universe. Everything had been so black and white: darkness bad, and light good. He has spent his life trying to become something she could love, a being who rejected darkness completely.

Travelling without her for the first time in his life is an experience that makes him want to become _himself_ , his true self.

He can only hope she doesn’t reject that.

* * *

But things are not as easy as Aqua had hoped them to be.

She tries to fight it, to push back that instinctive revulsion whenever she looks at the dark blue of her wrist and thinks of Terra, falling through an endless ocean of darkness.

She wonders what colour his dive station is. Does he even have to face it? Or is his heart so in tune with his head that he is not even faced with that crisis?

Each time she pulls at him, she feels him slipping further away. Aqua’s heart still flutters at the thought of him, still clenches in hope at the idea of their dream coming to fruition, for the freedom to finally _touch_ and not fear an impact on studies.

But then she meets Yen Sid. The butterflies turn to dust in her stomach, a filthy ashy mess that she vomits into one of the bushes near the tower when she hears of Eraqus’ death and the hand that drove the keyblade home.

Aqua is reminded, starkly, that her life is not a story she can plan out years in advance. Nothing she had ever planned could cover a pain like this, the crushing grief from the loss of the only father-figure she remembers. It is being doused in a bucket of ice, the realisation that the comfort she wants to seek will be found in the arms of his murderer, if Yen Sid speaks the truth.

The grief mixed in with the disbelief is what causes her stomach to broil and her knees to hit the hard mud, as she struggles to account for a world she had not ever imagined would come to pass. It is gritty and uncontrollable, but by the darkness, she had never imagined the sheer pain would come from _Terra_.

And Ven, poor _Ven_ , caught in the middle _again_ by wicked fate. Aqua hopes he didn’t have to see it, at least.

When she looks back at that day outside the tower, she wishes she could take back the revulsion and the horror, wishes she could see past the darkness and just _understand_. A colder Aqua will believe she should have learned the lesson that Eraqus did not, should have realised that rules are not rigid truths and she cannot change the world to fit her narrow view of light or darkness.

She doesn’t remember much of the journey to the Keyblade graveyard.

She doesn’t remember much of the battle, either. Aqua sees metal racing through the air, gold and orange and rusty steel blades, the blue of a reflective sphere she does not realise she is casting. She fights on instinct, the world changing around her as she tries to protect her boys, to keep Terra safe from the boy who is obsessed with Ven.

But the clouds part as Ven’s solid body falls to the floor, and her instinct to fight is overridden by her instinct to _help_ , before Ven twists and turns and becomes something he is not.

She awakens in Yen Sid’s tower with no idea how she got there, Ven’s unconscious body lying beside her like a warmed-up corpse. Terra is gone, to where they do not know.

The Name on her wrist is a deep midnight blue.

She almost lets out a wail, so fearful is she that it has gone _black_. It takes Mickey’s most soothing voice to reassure her it is blue, that Terra is alive out there even though something has gone wrong.

Aqua feels as though her world is sundering, and she’s the only one sane enough to see it.

* * *

When Braig finds the unconscious Terra’s body in the square several days later, the first thing he does is check the wrists.

It would be the proof of success, Xehanort had said.

And even though Xehanort had foretold it, had detailed exactly what he should expect to find if his plan worked and Terra was lost to him, Braig still finds himself recoiling in surprise when he lifts Terra’s wrists to find a Name on each. One is black, the name of someone long lost to the world.

The other is a deep blue, and Braig smirks when he recognises the name spelled out in elegant letters.

* * *

The darkness affects her in more ways than she expected it to.

It feels like donning armour that has been locked outside in the cold for weeks, a painful blanket around her shoulders that chills her to the bone. There is no familiarity, no feeling of shrugging on a familiar coat that Eraqus had always told her to expect. Perhaps once it may have felt like that, but she is too set against the darkness after seeing all it has done to her family to ever consider melting into it. It tastes like raw sugar under her tongue, dry cotton balls stuffed into her cheeks and behind her teeth. It is pins and needles on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, sandpaper down her throat, cold and chilling and unwelcoming.

Aqua hears no friendly whispers in the darkness. Instead she hears cold flames crackling, sees the ghost of her life wandering the darkness before her and chases it uselessly, endlessly. She sees the lessons of her life played out before her, contrasted in the darkness. Her arrogance, her unwavering sense of right and wrong with no room for movement pushing everyone close to her away. She sees all of her bridges burning in dark blue flames.

And worse, worst of all really, is the way the darkness changes her memories. It infringes on it all, a soul-destroying despair that ruins all the joy and happiness in her memories. The stars in the Land of Departure are no longer as bright as she made them out to be, no longer as beautiful to gaze upon.

Long after Mickey comes and goes, and after the island she has been standing on disappears, she encounters Terra again. She has left the shore, convinced that standing there waiting with the strange man in bandages will do her no favours. She has no idea where she is, only knows that the beach is a hundred thousand steps behind her, when she looks up and finds Terra standing before her.

Her heart thuds heavily against her breastbone. She lurches forward, her hand clasping around his wrist. For the briefest time, she feels solid warmth beneath her fingers, and the familiar tingle from touching her Name shoots up her arm and into her shoulder.

It’s the first time she’s touched him since the Mark of Mastery, and only a second later her fingers pass through his wrist. She frowns.

“How did you find me again?”

His smile is one she has not seen in months, since long before the stress of the looming Mark of Mastery fell upon him, before the failed result sent him careening off-path on a collision course with the darkness. It is warm and friendly and tinged with affection, the smile he reserved for her and her alone.

“I looked in my heart, and it led me here. I had to bring them here.”

If he’d ever said those words to her in the Realm of Light, she would have cringed from the awkward nonsense of it. Aqua very nearly did the first time he’d said something similar in the dark forest. But here, trapped completely in the darkness, she will take any ray of hope she can get.

“Your heart? Terra, where is your heart?” Because he had not had control of it when she fought him at Radiant Garden, that she knows for sure. And when she had seen him in the dark forest, Xehanort was trying to take control of him.

“Aqua, it’s not with _me_ anymore. It’s with _him_. Aqua, Ventus is- _argh!”_

Aqua steps closer, shaking her head in confusion as Terra tears at his hair, his teeth gritted together.

“Terra! Ventus, is he safe?” She cannot help as she rushes to touch him, to shake him into giving her an answer. He looks up at her, his eyes pained, and Aqua can see the Name on her wrist changing shades of blue with every second that passes.

“Ventus, he’s-“

Whatever he says disappears into the wind as Terra disintegrates before her. The glow from his presence is extinguished, and Aqua stands alone in the darkness.

She doesn’t bother trying to stop the tears in her eyes from rolling down her cheeks.

* * *

Riku and Mickey find her not long after.

She doesn’t think it has been a long time since she saw Mickey last, surely only _months_ in the Realm of Light, mere days in the Realm of Darkness.

Aqua just about collapses to her knees when Mickey tells her it has been over two years, and that’s _if_ not a lot of time has passed since he entered the Realm of Darkness with Riku.

But they are here, real and solid and not glowing apparitions from her heart. They are tangible, this she knows since she collided ungracefully with an eager-to-help Riku as she fought off one of the heartless. The relief is immense: all the tension in her bones, the fear and the uneasiness and the _cold_ melt away when she realises they are real.

She barely registers that _Riku_ summons a dark portal to get them out of the Realm of Darkness. Aqua of twelve years ago would be appalled at the thought of travelling through one willingly, but she is so _tired_ and _drained_ , to the point where she doesn’t give a damn anymore as long as she gets _out_.

They bring her out on the Destiny Islands.

It’s even more beautiful in the Realm of Light. The sun actually warms her skin, rather than simply light up the area. She can smell the waves on the salty air, rather than the scent of a thousand souls despairing in the darkness. The air is warm as she breathes it in, and the relief well and truly kicks in as she slumps against Riku. He catches her, _knowing_ already what is about to happen, and uses the momentum of her fall to lower her to her hands and knees.

Aqua has lived twelve years in the Realm of Darkness and has not aged a day. Her body does not approve.

She has lived twelve years with no hunger pangs, twelve years with no urge to drink and no urge to use the bathroom. She has felt no pain in her womb: part of the reason she had initially thought very little time had passed was _because_ of the lack of her cycle.

Her body reminds her, sharply, of all that she has missed.

To Aqua’s horror, as her hands hit the wet sand and the waves lap gently over them, she vomits up the remainder of the small meal she had taken at Yen Sid’s _twelve years ago_. It’s followed by copious amounts of bile, as Riku holds her hair back and kneels down in the water next to her.

She doesn’t get up for two hours.

Not for a lack of trying, but the sudden change from darkness to light after twelve years of living in it takes a toll on her body. Riku and Mickey reassure her it will likely pass soon enough: they themselves feel ill for the first half an hour that Aqua is vomiting, but it quickly passes for them due to how little time they have spent there.

She can feel a warm ickiness between her legs as her body clock starts ticking once more, can feel the sand biting into her knees after two hours of kneeling in it. Her legs and hands are freezing from the cool water, and her sashes are completely soaked. Aqua has sand on her face from where she has wiped at her mouth too many times, but Riku and Mickey make no comment on her sorry state.

And she is cold, _so so_ cold. In the Realm of Darkness she had quickly learned to ignore the cold. It had been tricky but not impossible, when she was surrounded by even colder beings. But here, on the beach at Destiny Islands, the sun burns her back and the top of her neck, sends her shoulders a raging red with sunburn, but still she feels the chill right down to her bones. Aqua doesn’t think she has ever been this cold in her life, and for the most pathetic of moments she almost wishes she hadn’t bothered coming back.

She falls unconscious there on the sand, and doesn’t even feel her face splash into the water before blessed sleep overtakes her. When she wakes up on the gummi ship, they’re halfway to Radiant Garden.

* * *

It is when they finally land on Radiant Garden that the passage of time becomes obvious to Aqua.

It’s late evening. The sun has set, though the sky is still a dusky blue. The street lights are coming on, and between the houses many rows of little fairy lights hang.

She barely recognises it.

It’s a mess, despite what Riku tells her is a recovery effort. There is exposed piping everywhere she looks, and she cannot recognise Castletown at _all_. She remembers Radiant Garden as just that, a radiant place with white floors and beautifully tended gardens, the sound of birds and rushing water invading the air. Not this concrete place of grey and wrecked buildings. The main square is the only area that _kind of_ looks like it used to, and Riku tells her it is because a lady named Aerith has devoted her all to reviving the centre of the world.

And of course, entering the old castle really drives the point home. The laboratory is brightly lit despite the late hour when Riku brings her in. At a desk sits a thin slate-haired man, and a little voice in the back of her mind recognises him almost immediately as the small child she had seen briefly here. It seems like only weeks ago.

The man looks up from the computer at their entrance, his bright eyes fixing her in place immediately. He looks even more familiar as a grown man, in a way she cannot quite put her finger on.

“You’ve returned. You were successful, I see.”

“How long were we gone?”

Ienzo tears his eyes away from Aqua and looks to Riku, his face unreadable.

“Twelve weeks.”

“ _Weeks?_ ” Riku sounds as though he can’t quite believe that. Aqua feels the need to point out that she’s been gone _twelve years_.

* * *

They manage to wake Ventus up two days before Aqua and Riku leave on a mission of their own.

The reunion is a bittersweet one. Aqua all but lunges at Ventus, desperate to have him in her arms again, awake and alive and _aware_. She holds him tightly from the moment he is well enough to stand, and Ventus nearly cracks her ribs returning the hug in kind.

The absence of Terra is nearly deafening. Ventus doesn’t ask, doesn’t even _need_ to in order to understand why the world seems strange and different and they are surrounded by numerous people they do not know.

Sora watches them with a warm but exhausted smile, and the loss of Ventus in his heart is surely an absence that he feels keenly. But he has his Name, and Aqua watches Riku lead him away with a pang of jealousy in her heart. Why couldn’t _she_ have had it so easy?

Even Ventus, holding on to her like he does not want to let go, has it easy. Twelve years ago she had panicked when she met the young Kairi outside the castle in Radiant Garden: now, she sees the nearly full-grown Kairi and understands _why_. She only has to believe that whatever bestows the Names upon them has a plan for her.

Easier said than done, really, when Terra’s body is inhabited by a maniac and his heart has disappeared.

Easier said than done, when everyone has their Name.

Everyone except Ienzo, that is. Aqua is in the laboratory one evening, accompanying Ventus who is chatting eagerly with Lea and Roxas, when she tugs off her glove and examines her wrist. It has gone a mottled deep blue, stark and vivid against the pale of her wrist, and the flesh almost feels _spongy_. It is agony to touch, feeling like an open wound that she has shoved salt into and sewn shut haphazardly.

Ienzo glances up from his seat at the computer as she is examining it.

“It means he has been taken over by Xehanort.”

Aqua lifts her chin. “Hm?”

Ienzo points down to her wrist with a pen.

“Your Name. The bruising, I surmised that it means your Name is not only lost to the darkness, but taken over by it.”

Ienzo seems certain of his explanation, and Aqua cocks her head to the side. “How do you know?”

The slate haired boy she recognises and does not recognise doesn’t say a word. He simply pulls up the sleeve of his lab coat and removes a ribbon from his wrist, and within the blink of an eye his wrist changes colour from pale unmarked skin to an _ugly_ deep purple.

It is worse than her own, she notices. The bruising has spread outwards from his Name, so thick and heavy that she cannot even _read_ the Name. The bruising extends up into his palm and down his forearm, and Aqua _knows_ from just looking at it that the pain must be unbearable.

Ienzo snaps his fingers to pull her out of her thoughts, and when she looks back the wrist is unmarked once more.

Aqua looks down to her own wrist and swallows thickly.

* * *

Riku and Aqua’s mission takes longer than they expect it to.

It is arduous and exhausting, and the final fight of it takes place on the Destiny Islands' beach. Whether it is the threat to his home, or the knowledge of who he is really fighting, something pushes Riku through that battle much better than it does Aqua.

It is Aqua who freezes the ocean surface and traps Terra in the water, furious and angry and so like himself in his fits of rage that Aqua has trouble realising he is still possessed in the first place. But it is Riku who summons the strength to knock him unconscious, Riku who has borne the brunt of the meteors and the earthquakes and the bone-shattering blows.

Aqua keeps Terra’s body unconscious for the entire gummi ship journey back to Radiant Garden. They both realise almost immediately that Terra has no heart _at all_. Whereas Riku had expected a heart hidden by Xehanort, and Aqua had expected a heart consumed by darkness, they are both stunned to realise that Terra is quite literally a _nothing_.

She spends the journey holding her wrist, confused and concerned, but the Name remains bruised. She desperately wants to look at his own, but she will not allow herself to breach his privacy in that way, even if she has seen it before.

* * *

Once Terra is secured in the cells below the castle, an exhausted Aqua and an eager Riku make their way to Ienzo’s lab. Riku is so hopeful that he can help the man who gave him the keyblade, certain that they can find a way to bring him back to himself, that he doesn’t even stop to see Sora on the way.

Aqua has learned not to hope at all.

Either way, when they reach the lab, it is nearly full of people. All five keyblade wielders who had been left behind are in one corner of the lab, crowded around a blond man with messy hair and an easy smile. Even Ventus looks charmed.

Riku does a double-take, his brows furrowing.

“When did _he_ get here?”

Ienzo does not look up from the screen, merely pushes his glasses up his nose and frowns at the monitor.

“Last month.”

“And he’s sitting on the desk _why?_ ” Riku doesn’t sound annoyed, merely incredulous. Ienzo tugs his glasses off with difficulty and turns to look at him.

“Because Roxas and Axel put the bright idea into his head that maybe he could learn to summon his tail with the water.”

Aqua notices the ribbon is gone from his wrist, and the Name is white.

* * *

Terra’s heart, it turns out, is hiding in plain sight.

 _Literally_ in plain sight. Aside from the one brief encounter with Terra when he was a child, all Riku knows of Terra is his body’s heartless and nobody.

So when both of those forms were destroyed, and after Terra’s heart had been unable to return to his Xehanort-possessed body, it had taken refuge in the only other fragment of itself it had available: the recesses of Ansem in Riku’s heart. And Riku, who could not recognise Terra as anything other than Ansem, only noticed the change in Ansem’s attitude.

They only realise it in the laboratory one terribly slow day, when the Xehanort-possessed body of Terra is bound in the lab as Ienzo tries to discover ways to expel the darkness. Riku enters the lab with Sora, and his neutral expression quickly changes to one of irritation as he presses the heel of his palm into his left eye.

“Riku?” Sora notices immediately, and Aqua looks up from her space next to Ienzo and Terra. A second passes, and Riku lowers his hand and schools his face back into his _neutral_ look.

“It’s nothing, just Ansem.” Riku shrugs it off nonchalantly, but Sora frowns.

“Riku, if he’s tempting you again…”

“He’s not.” Riku all but _snaps_ at Sora, and the hand goes back to pressing into his skull. “I _wish_ he was doing that, I could block _that_ out.”

“Then what’s he doing?” Sora is insistent, all up in Riku’s personal space in a way no one else can get away with, and Aqua frowns. Riku sighs.

“Telling me to let him out, accept him so I can _see_ him. He’s never asked me to give in to the darkness since before we killed Xemnas, only ever asks for me to accept him. He’s never been so fucking _vocal_ about it though.”

The sound of Ienzo’s fingers on the keyboard stop as he looks up. His gaze connects with Aqua’s as understanding dawns on their faces, and Ienzo slowly swivels around in his chair.

“Say that again.”

An hour later, and Sora is finally using the skills from his successful Mark of Mastery to unlock Riku’s heart and wake the sleeping one within.

* * *

“Terra? What happened to us?”

And so here they stand once more, facing one another in the centre of Radiant Garden’s square.

This time there are no keyblades raised, no defensive stances or magic crackling in the air. There is only the ruined tiles beneath their feet, the half-grown flower beds around them and the light of the fairy lamps illuminating the square. The dark circles under their eyes are not from the exhaustion of fighting each other, but from long nights awake reliving nightmares of the darkness.

“We’re just not the same. Everything I’ve done…”

The exhausted part of Aqua, the part that has been exposed to darkness for twelve years and the part that has forged her bones to steel and cast her heart in iron, that part wants to agree with him. She wonders why she came, why she agreed to go on this awkward midnight walk with a man who has kept her at a safe distance since the day he failed an _exam_.

Is that really where it all went wrong? She wonders, because Aqua cannot believe she has lost her _best_ friend to bitterness and darkness. She has gone to the ends of the world to save him, cast herself in darkness for twelve years to give him a chance, and stuck by his side through a long and arduous recovery.

She has used more healing potions than the number of days that have passed since he became _Terra_ again, all of them on him and all of them to heal breaking and snapping bones as the darkness kept trying to consume him from within. Her Name has turned from white to blue to white again, in an endless cycle over the weeks to the point where waking up and seeing it is always a surprise.

And still she may have lost him.

Aqua stands her ground, and gives him a choice.

“I’m not the same either, Terra. And I can’t fix you, just like Sora can’t fix Riku’s nightmares and Kairi can’t help Ventus sleep for longer than twenty minutes at a time. I’m not excusing what you’ve done either.”

“Then why did you agree to come here with me?” His eyes are dark, and as the light levels get lower Aqua becomes increasingly aware of his presence in front of her. She can physically _feel_ him there, feel the warmth from his skin and the smell that was always so distinctively _Terra_.

“Because you asked me to.”

He huffs a derisive laugh, and Aqua feels her shoulders lower with exasperation.

“I don’t know why I did.” It’s honest, but _damn_ if that doesn’t sting. Aqua sighs.

“Terra, don’t you _see_? We’re stuck on this awful path and I don’t know where it ends. I thought I did, but I only see darkness. But we can _change_ it. Don’t make me go on alone.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

Her frustration mounts to a breaking point, and Aqua loses her cool in an almost dignified way that is entirely Aqua. She steps closer to him, quick enough that he nearly recoils on instinct, and she throws all her notions of privacy out of the window as she tears the glove from his wrist and takes his hand in her own.

The shock of the contact is instant, as strong as it was the first time Aqua felt it due to Terra’s new body. It jolts up her wrist and nestles at the tip of her spine, a crinkling tingle that feels like she is working out a kink in her neck. Terra’s eyes widen, the action so entirely unexpected and out of character for her.

“ _This_. This is why I’m here, Terra. I have lived twelve years in the darkness and you have lived twelve years as a shadow, and the world has turned upside down and I don’t recognise it anymore. The world is different and nothing is the same, and the only thing that hasn’t changed is I’m still in love with you and you’re still in love with me.” Aqua’s heart thuds hard against her chest; her nerves are on fire and she almost feels _sick_ saying it aloud and baring her heart to him like this.

He may not think he is ready, he may _truly_ not be even remotely the same man he once was, and he may _not_ be in love with her as she is in love with him, has been since the day she met him.

If he is either of those things, she can chase him no further.

He takes a step closer.

Aqua can feel herself holding her breath. He is close enough that the gentle breeze is all but blocked by his frame, and it feels as though time has quite literally _halted_. She feels his knuckles graze along her jaw as he cups her face in his hands, his fingers curling along the back of her skull. Aqua lifts her hands to hold onto his forearms, and she daren’t let go lest he disappears on the wind.

And _finally_ , for the first time in twelve years, he gives her that warm smile meant only for _her_.

“You’ve never said it to me before.” His smile may be familiar but it is hesitant, as though he is unsure if his attempt to lighten the mood will make it worse or better, and Aqua frowns.

“I have.”

Terra shakes his head, but his smile turns serious.

“I’m not who I used to be.” And he’s not: the darkness still rises in him as he fights to keep it down, just as the darkness has warped her and changed her too. But despite his words, his face is still moving closer to her own, and her response is whispered onto his lips.

“Neither am I.”

The kiss is warm and sweet, and Aqua melts into Terra as her hands move from his arms to his chest, fingers tightening in the belt straps across his chest. It is desperate and messy, the kiss of two people who have denied themselves for _far_ too long, for reasons she can’t even remember. It is love, the feeling that bubbles up in her chest as Terra lowers one arm to wrap tight around her waist and tug her closer to him, uncaring of any onlookers who may be watching.

It is love and relief and _happiness_ that makes her giggle against his lips, that makes him smile and kiss it away. It is happiness that buzzes along the Name on her wrist, that messy scrawl of _Terra_ that makes him hers.

It feels like coming home.


End file.
